LTE-M Coexistence Within 5G New Radio Carrier

In Re1-13 of 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE), 3GPP introduced LTE-M feature for supporting machine type communications used by the Internet of Things. LTE-M is a lowpower, wide-area cellular technology that can be deployed within existing 4G LTE networks. In 5G New Radio (NR), LTE-M has also been adopted by 3GPP to provide massive machine type communications support. The ability to deploy LTE-M technology in 4G network and reuse LTE-M technology in 5G network is beneficial as it prevents having two different technologies for the same use cases and therefore fragmenting the market. It also provides support for legacy 4G LTE-M devices as 4G systems are migrated to 5G. In this paper, we discuss deployment of LTE-M within 5G carrier including deployment options, coexistence issues, spectrum sharing, overhead analysis and enhancements.